Career
Sirocco remained with the gang as manager of the Pearl House dance hall with Johnny Torrio and the satellite James Street Gang, until 1911 when he and Chick Tricker left wounded Eastman leader Jack Zelig behind during a failed robbery. Attempting to gain control of the gang both he and Tricker refused to post bail for Zelig. Upon Zelig"s release Sirocco and Tricker planned Zelig"s death, sending Eastman member Jules Morrello (or Julie Morrell) to murder Zelig.
This would begin a civil war between the two Eastman factions that would last for nearly a year until Zelig"s death in 1912.
Sirocco and Tricker tried to lead the Eastman Gang after Monk Eastman briefly returned to lead the Eastmans, but by that time the civil war had destroyed what was left of the gang. In November 1913 the two gangs clashed as Sirocco"s gang, hired by the Feldman Hat Company as strikebreakers against union workers protected by Benny Fein"s gang, quickly escalated into a major gunfight in which Fein lieutenant Max Greenwalt was killed (most likely by Sirocco member Red Murray although other sources state that Greenwalt was killed by Johnnie Dike in a gunfight on Broome Street).
Benny Fein planned an ambush to eliminate the Sirocco gang as they were attending a local dance at Arlington Hall on January 9, 1914. However the ambush turned into a major battle lasting several hours and, while neither gang suffered any casualties, Deputy Court Clerk Frederick Strauss, apparently investigating the battle, was killed in the crossfire.
In the ensuing scandal and the police crackdown, Sirocco disappeared from New York"s underworld soon after the incident.